JoeChin.com

If you haven’t heard by now then you’ll be sad to know that Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, has succumbed to cancer. There are a lot of words that are paraded in sentences before and after his name: CEO, pioneer, visionary, entrepreneur, Jesus. And yet, at the same time, so many other just as notable people have passed at the same moment, like Nobel Prize recipient Ralph Steinman, and civil rights activist Fred Shuttlesworth. Each of these man contributed greatly to the human conscious and yet only one retains the headline in the news (at least in the Western World).

So what is it about Steve Jobs that draws strong emotions from so many people that have never met him. His inner circle of friends is quite small and still diverse. Being a multibillionaire means you have armed escorts and an almost paranoid entitlement to privacy, yet there are stories after stories of meeting Steve in the mall, at a sushi restaurant, in the Apple store, on 1 infinite loop, etc. He was the best type of salesman, he sold the products he believed in, and he was very prophetic. To him the idea of 2,3,4 button mouses were stupid, computer specs were stupid to a population that didn’t care, blu-ray discs were also stupid (and as an owner of a PS3, I tend to agree).

He was the catalyst in breaking into new markets. There may have been early pioneers but their technology wasn’t very good. He saw what was possible, went into it, and made it better. No one remembers smartphones before the iPhone. There are some (yours truly) that were early adopters, but we paid for it in price, bugs, and stupidity. Competitors love him and loathe him at the same time. If Apple has entered your territory it meant 2 things, you have some serious competition and you have a much larger market. The former meant you were on a countdown to get your products up to snuff, the latter meant that users that didn’t consider your product before are all of a sudden interested (see Roku, Archos, Nokia smartphones).

In business Steve was aggressive, to his enemies he was wiley, to his family he was dad.

The weekend of June 22nd brought the Paris Airshow to town an me and Mack had a great time there. Clear skies and a bright sun ruled the day and we made the most of it. Getting there was a bit of a headache but we were able to board the bus from Paris to le bourget and get a seat for the 30-60 minute ride. The second stop had a lot more people who had been waiting for the bus for an hour. Heated words were exchanged between those wanting to get on but couldn’t and those packed on board like sardines in a can. I really enjoyed seeing the new planes like the A380 and the boeing 787. We briefly saw the solar impulse. A lightweight powered glider powered by a PV array.

About a month ago I started a small backyard garden. Since I didn’t know what I was doing it’s been an experience. My tomatoes are coming up strong. I’ve got another plant I have no idea what it is. Having good documentation and labeling is really important I’m finding out. I’ve battled a slug infestation successfully as well as small weeds. Getting started has cost more than I assumed. But just like any new project once you have the materials it gets cheaper and easier.

I’ll keep you posted as the basil and mints come up. There is also some green peppers somewhere in there as well.

I’m a dad and a geek and I’ve been looking at getting my son, who’s a toddler, more involved with the things I like. We still do the other father son activities like walking to the park, playing football, and video games. But when all those things are away I usually go to my workdesk and break things down and build them back up. The size and delicacy of these gizmos means that my son is restricted from being too involved.

Luckily, some hacker Julian da Silva has created a kickstarter project called Minibloq to get the kids started programming the Arduino. I really look forward to working it into projects that my son and I can collaborate on in the future. The kickstarter goal has just been met so in the next few weeks or months something interesting should be emerging.

My apartment is one of the lucky ones in Paris to have a garden in the back. This probably doesn’t mean much to you but city living usually means seeing green is on TV, vacation, or at the park. But I haven’t been very good about it. Getting the house in order has been a challenge that I neglected the garden for too long. So this past weekend me and the family went to the garden center, truffaut to get some much needed supplies. With only 35sq. meters my garden isn’t very big so a huge ride on lawnmower was out of the question. But so was gas and even the little electric ones. I did get an inexpensive lawn trimmer; it’s electric and compresses down and folds up to fit in the original box. I also picked up packets and packets of seeds. A lot more than I wanted to really, on the way home I realized that for the price we paid for the tomato seeds we could have bought a bag of fresh ones from the grocery store. Gardening is a very expensive hobby, the price at checkout is more than I’m comfortable sharing but it was a long walk back to the train station to get everything home.

So we’ve got seeds, we’ve got organic soil, and we’ve got some planters to get this thing going. What we don’t have is compost, and you need a lot of it. So I started researching composters, the ones in the store came in 2 varieties, the very expensive kind that does everything for you and the very cheap kind that could be done cheaper using things around the house anyway. Really, they were charging 26€ for a burlap sack. But it was dyed green. Realizing that I had everything at home to do the same I started looking into making my own composter. Unlike the huge one you might find on a farm this one had to be suitable to fit in the garden, couldn’t interact with the native vegetation, and had to be sealed from rodents. The last thing I want is a hovel for mice.

In the storage room I found a good equivalent to what I was looking for. A clear storage box approximately 40ccx40cmx80cm. The cover was cracked into a million pieces but who cares I can improvise anyway. First thing to do is wash it clean. This is going to be used to create the soil going into the plants we’ll eventually be eating so the dust and crap were washed out. I drilled what must have been 100 holes into the thing. A good aerobic composter needs plenty of fresh air. I settled it into the shadiest part of the garden, but I don’t know if this will be any good. The garden is southern exposed with our apartment on the west side. I then filled it with wet newspaper and some potting soil. The former will regulate the humidity, hopefully, of the soil by keeping or releasing water as needed. The later contains the microbes necessary to get this thing started.

So what about that cover? It’s completely destroyed and without the pile will dry out and instead of rich compost you’ll get desiccated fruit rinds. The solution I found was a ripped, old burlap bag. It’s white which should keep the sun from backing it too much and it’s naturally ventilated. I cut that old thing to the size I need and using some screws I attached one side, permanently, to the box and the other is loosely attached. I’ll rig a clasp to the other side so the burlap top fits snug and will need to put a point or curve in the top so the water rolls off instead of  pools in the center. I’ll check the progress in a few weeks to see how my pile of renewable resources is working out.

A week ago I went on vacation to Hawaii to visit family. While I was there I took advantage of the exchange rate to get a device that I’ve been hearing a lot about. That was the Nook Color; an ebook reader available from the store Barnes and Noble. For a color ebook reader that boasts a 7-inch screen the $250 price is hard to beat.

Already, hackers have gotten hold of the system and rooted the custom version of Android that runs on it. The underlying OS is Android 2.1(Eclair) which doesn’t support Flash. According to BN an update should be available shortly that updates the system to 2.2 (Froyo) and includes the Flash player. The included reader application from BN is quite nice. It supports DRMed epub, open epub, text, and pdf files. A simple file browser allows you to open videos, pictures, and music files as well as browse towards your ebook files. There is a bookcase like display that you can add your current books too. Or, replacing the android status bar, you can go directly to the last opened book but selecting it from the status bar.

One thing the BN reader has that their Android Marketplace app doesn’t is the ability to read books aloud. Since I have a 4 year old this was a very handy feature that isn’t available in all the ebook reader applications I’ve tried. Without rooting the device your choices for entertainment are limited. It includes chess, crossword puzzles, and soduku as the included games. Rooting the device is as simple as downloading a file to an SDCard and booting from it. Instructions are available here. Once done you’ll have acces to a different applauncher and the android market. I downloaded the game Angry Birds and had a great time playing it on a much larger screen than my iPhone.

Not completely satisfied with spending money on a device that only has one purpose I decided to install an alternate version of the OS. Using this guide I installed the current version of Android, 2.3(Gingerbread). But after being disappointed with the battery life, button placement, and available ereaders I went back to the original firmware, that I eventually rooted.

The current release isn’t fast by any means but it is the one that works the best all things considered. CM7 didn’t have proper power management and having to charge an ereader everyday was beginning to be annoying. With the original firmware the Nook Color can go a week between charges.

The other day I got an invitation from a member of Github hosting a party in the 11th at an Irish pub. Me being an introverted programmer means I don’t get out too often and thought this would be an interesting way to meet other programmers. And I was not disappointed.

The guys I met, and they were mostly guys, were very open to talking about industry, programming, and international politics. Topics ranged from the direction of mobile development, embedded development, and history of mobile development. When we weren’t talking about programming we covered areas such as international finance and being a quant. Occassionally someone would make fun of the Symfony attendees. Since they were familiar with each other and we were not it felt good to break the ice by going after the insiders.

All in all, a great night out with a great bunch of people. As a developer you rarely get to meet other developers except online and the occassional conference. The sharing of ideas is very rewarding and I hope to do it again.

PS: It also helps when someone else is paying for drinks, so a big thank you to Github.

The final version of greenpois0n has been released. This is the version that includes the AppleTV 2G which was not included in the previous release candidates. Installation was really really simple. For this jailbreak you’ll need the power cord, Apple remote and microUSB cable. The instructions are as follows:

1. Start greenpois0n. And click Jailbreak
2. Plug in the microUSB cable first.
3. Plug in the power cable.
4. Press Menu and Play on the Apple Remote for 7 seconds.
5. After a minute it should complete. Don’t disconnect the AppleTV right away. It will need a minute to build a ramdisk.
6. After an appropriate amount of time you can unplug the AppleTV and reconnect it to your TV.

Once I connected it to the TV and let it boot I was presented with a new menu option to install the payload software. Make sure your internet connection is on and run the script to install Cydia and NitoTV. After Cydia is installed the AppleTV should reboot again and the greenpois0n menu option should disappear and nitotv will be in its place. Now you can install software (like XBMC-ATV2) with just a click.

One problem I did have was that XBMC didn’t install. You can connect to your AppleTV using SSH root:alpine is the default username and password. Run the command below to install it.

Apple-TV:~ root# apt-get install org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2

Note, that it might throw an error at the end. You can ignore this because it will be installed and fully functional. The TV menu should change but if not you can restart it by sending a killall AppleTV to restart the GUI.

The hosts file is a little text file on your Mac, Linux, or Windows PC that is allows you to bypass certain domain names. This is usually found under /etc/hosts. For those not really wanting to drop into command-line to edit the file there is an app for that. Detours is an application by Jerod Santo @sant0sk1 that allows you to easily modify this without having to be root and doesn’t change your hosts file.

For developers this is a handy tool in case you want to bypass a connection from going out to the internet and reroute it to, say for example, a testing or development server.

It certainly took long enough but chronic-dev has released greenp0ison for the Mac (and eventually windows and Linux). The server was down earlier so I’ve added a link in the bottom of the page to store a copy here until they get their servers together. This works on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, and AppleTV2. For now it only does jailbreaks so if you are needing to unlock the phone you’ll have to continue waiting until a new version of ultrasn0w (or whatever it will be called) is released.

greenp0ison_mac_rc4